Lasting Impressions | Summer 2016

28 x NSU LASTING IMPRESSIONS Richard Christopher Mariani, Jr., D.D.S., M.S., is one of those rare people who has known what he wanted to do since he was a kid. Rarer still, he got the first real-world experience that would lead to his career as a successful, much-admired orthodontist when he was just in the seventh grade. Mariani—Chris to his friends, family, and colleagues—has been around dentistry all his life. His father, Richard Christopher Mariani, Sr., D.M.D., is a general restorative dentist who still sees patients nearly two days a week in an office near South Miami Hospital. And when his only child told him, “Dad, I might want to be a dentist,” the elder Mariani found his son a mentor: orthodontist Joseph Lunsford, D.D.S., M.S. So, at the age of 12, Mariani began working with the man who would teach him the basics of his profession throughout the aspiring dentist’s years at Epiphany School, Christopher Columbus High School, and the University of Miami. “I went into orthodontics because of my experience with Joe,” said Mariani, whose friend and mentor now practices in Palm Beach County. “I watched him work. He taught me how to bend wire, as well as the basics of tooth movement. He was a real professional.” Mariani received his dental education at the Emory University School of Dentistry in Atlanta, Georgia, graduating with his D.D.S. degree in 1981, then earning his M.S. from the Georgetown Univer- sity School of Dentistry’s Department of Orthodontics in 1983. Both dental schools have since closed—Emory’s in 1988 and Georgetown’s in 1990. CDM’s Academics BY CHRISTINE DOLEN Richard Christopher Mariani, Jr.